Healthy Meals Incentives: Action for Healthy Kids and CS-Effect Media Relations Campaign
The Challenge
Action For Healthy Kids (AFHK) joined forces with the USDA on the Healthy Meals Incentives (HMI) Initiative to provide grants and award recognition to schools improving child nutrition. As part of the HMI initiative, the USDA brought together school districts, states, school nutrition leaders, and other partners at the 2024 Fall Healthy Meals Summit in Las Vegas. They needed help in developing the HMI media relations strategies to increase Summit registrations, highlight federal commitments to school nutrition through programs such as HMI, drive applications for the HMI Recognition Awards program, and elevate parents’ awareness of the importance of school nutrition and the funding needed
The Action
CS-Effect researched previous media coverage on school nutrition and federal funding. We identified target outlets for each audience, aiming to reach parents through mass media and nutrition professionals through a combination of local, regional, national, and industry outlets. CS-Effect created news hooks and storylines to secure earned media coverage, customizing outreach angles for each audience: highlighting a spokesperson at Clark County School District for local media; emphasizing AFHK’s involvement for industry media; and balancing national, federal, and local spokespeople for mass media.
Additionally, to make an industry-specific event mass-media friendly, CS-Effect hosted a School Meals Cooking Challenge, featuring Clark County High School culinary arts students working with nationally recognized nutrition professionals to create healthy meals. We also secured two in-studio cooking demonstrations with USDA and AFHK spokespeople alongside a Clark County nutritionist, showcasing approaches like scratch cooking, farm-to-school menus, and hydroponic gardening.